The Religious Services Ministry has said that it is moving
toward a system in which the serving rabbi of any congregation, whether
Orthodox or non-Orthodox, will be financially supported by the ministry.

…The Jerusalem Post, however, understands
that it is doubtful such measures will be implemented because of opposition to
them from elements within the ministry.

There are still many questions we need answered from
Minister Bennett. When will this plan become reality? When will these new
community appointed rabbis be given the same status as their Orthodox
counterparts? We need to see the results of his words.

Important
differences will remain between Orthodox and non-Orthodox rabbis. Salaries for
the Reform and Conservative rabbis will come from the Ministry of Culture and
Sports, rather than the Ministry of Religious Services. Also, the rabbis will
not be government employees, but will instead receive stipends from the state.
The new regulations cover only rural communities, not cities.

Still, this is
the first time that the term “rabbi” will be used by the government to refer to
a female religious leader.

Miri Gold, 63, rabbi of
Kibbutz Gezer’s Birkat Shalom congregation, is taking this latest hurdle in
stride. “I spent seven years fighting for this – what’s a few more years?” she
shrugs. “After all, I didn’t do this for the money, but the principle,” she
adds. “It was always a symbolic issue for me.”

…To date though, only two non-Orthodox Israelis have drawn state
salaries as a result of the ruling, and one of them is not even a rabbi.
(In comparison, some 4,000 rabbis of Orthodox congregations receive state
salaries.)

The rest have, like Gold, faced a series of hurdles from the
Ministry of Culture in the form of unclear, rapidly changing and seemingly
discriminatory criteria, says Orly Erez Likhovski, the Israel Religious Action
Center lawyer behind the petition.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Rabbi Levi
Weiman-Kelman, who leads a 300-family Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. “We’re a
long way from it happening. I’m certainly not going to put in additional
spending money yet.”

“The
big question is if this will be implemented in a way that’s really equal,” said
Yizhar Hess, CEO of the Israeli Conservative movement. “It’s too early to say
what the criteria will be, when they will come up or whether they will be
equal.”

The Religious
Services Ministry offered no information about the criteria being formulated,
or even when the standards would be decided.

The Women of the Wall
campaign group met with Religious Services Minister Naftali Bennett and Deputy
Minister Eli Ben-Dahan on Wednesday afternoon as part of efforts to reduce
tensions over the combustible issue of prayer rights at the Western Wall.

WoW will hold their
monthly prayer service at the women’s section of the Wall on Sunday, which
marks the start of the Jewish month of Tamuz, and the group has said that it
will read from a Torah scroll during the service.

“Women of the Wall
won’t back down in the face of bullying; the people who should be punished for
disturbing the peace are the people who disturb the peace, not the Women of the
Wall who are just seeking to conduct their prayer service.”

[A]ny solution at the Wall must acknowledge the fact that the
Wall is, first and foremost, a national and historic site, with religious
significance to all Jews, whatever their denomination.

Right now it has been
transformed into an exclusive haredi shteible – an ultra-Orthodox synagogue in
which the rabbi in charge is constantly raising the divisional barrier and
shrinking the women’s section.